xx, 375 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : 22 cm
"The story of this war has usually been told in terms of a conflict between blundering British generals and their rigidly disciplined red-coated troops on the one side and heroic American patriots in their homespun shirts and coonskin caps on the other. Basing his compelling narrative on a variety of sources - enlivened by astute character sketches of the principal participants and eye-witness accounts - Christopher Hibbert portays the realities of a savage war which raged the length of an entire continent. It was war, condemned by thousands of his fellow-countrymen, which George Washington came perilously close to losing. Both before and after General Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga the British rarely lost a battle until the French, motivated largely by self-interest, helped the rebels defeat Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781"--Jacket